You hear managers, particularly in the upper echelons of the game, moaning constantly about fixture congestion and tiredness for their players and how 4 games in 11 days is going to be a pretty tough ask. Well, some of them might want to try Guernsey FC’s fixture list on for size, with the Green Lions set to play 17 matches in April, with the club looking at Friday, Saturday and Sunday games on three weekends of the month and a couple of matches where they kick-off at 7.45pm one evening and then turn back out again at 3pm the following day.
At least for the Channel Islanders 10 of those 17 matches are at their Footes Lane ground, which has hosted just three league games since the 10th of November due to waterlogging problems. So, quite what the pitch is going to look like after 10 matches are played on it in 23 days is anybody’s guess. The Somme presumably. Tomorrow though Guernsey are back on the road in one of the other reasons for their fixture congestion, that being a long run in the FA Vase which has seen them make it all the way to the semi-finals.
That looks as far as the Green Lions will be going though after losing 3-1 at home to Spennymoor Town in the first leg of the tie last Saturday in front of a bumper record crowd of 4,290 at Footes Lane. That hardly the result the Channel Islanders were looking for ahead of their near 1,000 mile round trip to County Durham for the second leg to face a Town side whose own promotion bid from the Northern League has suffered due to backlog of fixtures with Spennymoor at present 26 points behind leaders Darlington 1883 but with a massive 9 games in hand, and with just 7 of their remaining 18 matches being at home it looks like more than a lost cause for the Brewery Field outfit.
As far as Guernsey are concerned in the league meanwhile, well the fact that at the time of writing towards the end of March they have played just half their matches with only a month and a bit of the campaign left tells you everything. The Green Lions currently in sixth place with an excellent record of 16 wins, 3 draws and 2 defeats but they are now 18 points behind table-toppers Egham Town with 8 games in hand, while the matches to come situation gets even dafter when you take into account that Guernsey are 13 matches short of Windsor’s 34 games played.
You’d have to say then that promotion looks highly unlikely this season for the Channel Islanders, but that was something they did achieve in 2011-12 in their first campaign in the English non-league pyramid. The Green Lions fairly charging to the Combined Counties Division One title with a remarkable record over a 34 game season of won 31, drawn one and lost two, alongside an incredible goal difference of 138 for and just 22 against.
The blurb on the Guernsey FC website regarding their formation reading: “Guernsey Football Club was formed in 2011 to offer the island's elite footballers the opportunity to progress and test themselves on a regular basis outside of the Channel Islands. The proposal to establish the club and seek to join the English national league pyramid system was developed by the Guernsey Football Association in an attempt to further advance development opportunities for the island's current and future players by playing at higher levels on a regular basis.”
The two most famous sporting names from the Island you would think are tennis player Heather Watson and former footballer Matt Le Tissier, and it is ‘Le Tiss’ who is the Club President of Guernsey FC, while his brother Mark is one of the directors and also the Football Secretary. Probably the main thing for the Green Lions though comes courtesy of a wider net with the club having to fund not only their own travel to the mainland for games, but also that of the clubs visiting the island for matches. Whether that can be sustainable in the long term remains to be seen, but it promises to be an interesting one to keep an eye on.